15 minute cities coming to your area soon

Your post reads like a parody, hcw. Were you trying to be funny?

happycatholicwife1

Everyone will be affected whether they think so or not. This is only the initial step in this kind of thing, and it is, indeed, an attempt at social control. We're having the same thing over here in the US, although we have successfully fought off that part of it so far. What they want to do now is to put high-rise section 8 or rent reduced apartments in every neighborhood of the country, meaning they want also feel economic groups to be mixed together and just sort of figure it out. It's an attempt at socialist type equitable housing, but instead of building good housing that matches the neighborhoods and finding people who can afford to live there, they will bring in a lot of social miscreants, people with not enough money to afford the lifestyle. But then, the goal is not really to find housing for poor people, the goal is to cause chaos in the neighborhoods and to disrupt white suburbs (although it really has nothing to do with skin color, it's socioeconomic). Plenty of black people with good educations and good jobs live in our area already. This is going to cause a huge weight to be placed on the school system, the hospital system, the road system, and the police. Much more crime happens around this type of housing where people have to live so densely.

Shameful.

happycatholicwife What you describe is the norm in the UK and has been for years.

Far from bringing social unrest and crime to low crime areas, it has had exactly the opposite effect. It has taken us back to the normal village living patterns of the past where large expensive houses would be mixed with cottages. Where the doctor's children go to school with the shop assistant's children and where people of all incomes live and mix in the same community, use the same services, and do not expected to be discriminated against because of their household income or its source. My DH grew up in just such a community.

We now live in what is a now a large village on the edge of a an area full of high tech research and also acres and acres of warehouses. In other words high paid and low paid jobs. In recent years the village has expanded and the community itself through its village council fought the planning authority to ensure that the new estates had a mix of housing from small to large and included social housing. We also stopped one developer from isolating the social housing from the rest of the housing and what we have is truly mixed development. Our housing is a mix of property size and tenure and you cannot tell by looking at a property on a new estate know whether the occupant is a warehouseman in a socially subsidised house or a young couple buying their first home.

I like you am a catholic and your post is shameful. It completely ignores catholic social teaching. Here is a link to the seven principles of catholic social teaching published by your own US Conference of catholic bishops. www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe/catholic-social-teaching/seven-themes-of-catholic-social-teaching.

Everyone will be affected whether they think so or not. This is only the initial step in this kind of thing, and it is, indeed, an attempt at social control. We're having the same thing over here in the US, although we have successfully fought off that part of it so far. What they want to do now is to put high-rise section 8 or rent reduced apartments in every neighborhood of the country, meaning they want also feel economic groups to be mixed together and just sort of figure it out. It's an attempt at socialist type equitable housing, but instead of building good housing that matches the neighborhoods and finding people who can afford to live there, they will bring in a lot of social miscreants, people with not enough money to afford the lifestyle. But then, the goal is not really to find housing for poor people, the goal is to cause chaos in the neighborhoods and to disrupt white suburbs (although it really has nothing to do with skin color, it's socioeconomic). Plenty of black people with good educations and good jobs live in our area already. This is going to cause a huge weight to be placed on the school system, the hospital system, the road system, and the police. Much more crime happens around this type of housing where people have to live so densely.

Thank you Doodledog!

I do apologise if I caused offence by my clumsy words, which were to be honest a description of the conspiracy theorists, not people here.
Fair enough. We all post things that come across differently from how they were intended - I know I've done so before now .

I used to act for big developers LHD, and imo the system is only loaded in their favour by the existence of planning committees comprised of lay persons. Frequently they appeal, successfully, because a committee decision has not been made in line with proper planning considerations. Personally I would like to see planning applications dealt with exclusively by professional planning officers. Planning committees were one of the banes of my professional life.

DoodleDog the thing is, the OP started off her question about 15-minute neighbourhoods, and then introduced the business of 100 car trips, recognition cameras and fines, which are not part of the 15-minute neighbourhood principle, Such an idea may have been mooted somewhere, maybe even in Oxford I don't know for sure, but the schemes do not need to have such things and most if not all probably won't. Even so, it's those ideas that are brought up by conspiracy theorists outwith Gransnet (and mostly in America but Nick Fletcher MP ran with it in Parliament) to try to bring down the whole idea. By the way, I have never used the term "right-wing" in this context, I'd be more inclined to call the conspiracy theorists "libertarians".

Somewhere upthread I did post a link to Oliver Wainwright's Guardian piece which said pretty much what I think only more eloquently. I suspect quite a few contributors missed it, there hasn't been much comment on it anyway. I'll repeat it here anyway.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/16/15-minute-city-planning-theory-conspiracists

I do apologise if I caused offence by my clumsy words, which were to be honest a description of the conspiracy theorists, not people here.

Germanshepherdmum it's the job of the committee chair to mediate between the officers and members. As you seem to know about the process I'm sure you don't need me to tell you about that but it's not as transparent a process as it ought to be. I would meet with the officers before the agenda was drawn up to discuss anything that might be contentious and persuade them to renegotiate anything I thought my committee would not accept. It was never easy. I didn't want my committee to be too conservative in outlook while at the same time being frustrated that the whole system was loaded in favour of the big developers. But sometimes planning officers are wrong, and more often they are overcautious. There's a right time and a wrong time to override officers' recommendations and I'm sure nobody wants a local planning committee to be just a rubber stamp for developers.

LHD: If only planning committees always listened to planning officers - it’s when they don’t, and think they, as lay people, know better, that, in my experience, they land the council with a big legal bill because their decision is successfully challenged.

LadyHonoriaDedlock

Doodledog I know about planning officers, I've chaired a planning committee in the past. My aim always was to ensure that developments were on a human scale but also minimised the need for car use. Doing my best to ensure that offices and shopping centres were easily accessible by public transport. It's not always possible when you have the likes of Tesco threatening you with very expensive lawyers if you reject their plans and try to impose conditions on them they don't like. Planning officers are annoying sometimes but they aren't the enemy. Their job is to try to steer a course between the big corporations and the needs of real people without landing the council with a huge legal bill when Tesco or Bellway go to court and win (as they usually do).

I think you have completely missed the point of my post, which was about the tone of the responses, not their accuracy, and that the posters you denigrated were responding to the OP, which clearly stated that fines would be imposed on people taking too many trips outside of their allocated zones. Not everyone is a planner, not everyone will know the detail of the plans, and that doesn't make them (us) any of the things you claimed.

Most people cannot work from home.

For people who work in offices it could be the way forward at least for part of the week, but for so many it is impossible.

Perhaps because I've never used a car, didn't learn to drive - and live where we have decent public transport, off-road cycle paths and good transport for the disabled - I see things differently.

Drivers are very keen to protect their 'rights' to free movement, individual transport and the obvious convenience of just hopping in their cars for (often very short) trips.

I'm worried about the future, the pollution (not just from fuels) and wastage of resources. I see the restrictions imposed on others by these 'rights' - the communities divided by busy roads, the children kept indoors with nowhere to play, the noise, damage, litter, ugly depressing neighbourhoods resulting from increased traffic.

It simply can't continue, we can't keep building more/bigger roads, provide even more parking - there just isn't room. Supply can never meet demand so demand has to drop. Free public transport, good local facilities, more working from home - and (sorry) higher costs are the only way. People change their habits when it saves them money.

Of course, those living in remote areas, those who cannot walk, cycle or hop on a bus, need consideration and their cars - yet still, I can't help wondering how many ruin their health by never walking anywhere.

Doodledog I know about planning officers, I've chaired a planning committee in the past. My aim always was to ensure that developments were on a human scale but also minimised the need for car use. Doing my best to ensure that offices and shopping centres were easily accessible by public transport. It's not always possible when you have the likes of Tesco threatening you with very expensive lawyers if you reject their plans and try to impose conditions on them they don't like. Planning officers are annoying sometimes but they aren't the enemy. Their job is to try to steer a course between the big corporations and the needs of real people without landing the council with a huge legal bill when Tesco or Bellway go to court and win (as they usually do).

Well, there are plenty of empty shops waiting for enterprising new business owners here and more each week - if only the Council would reduce the rents and rates 🙂

I'm wondering if a lot of this conversation is at cross purposes. I know a lot of comment I've seen elsewhere online sees the 15-minute neighbourhood in terms of putting people in huge stalinist concrete blocks. I don't see that at all. I see it more in terms of a return to low-density, human-scale communities, urban villages if you like. with everyday shopping and social needs met by local shops, pubs and cafés but nothing to say you can't go further afield for bigger shopping.

Ah. Some attempt at accepting that there are different points of view, and anyone not agreeing with your just might not be anti-mask, anti-vaxx, anti-EU, anti-woke, anti-immigrant, anti-feminist, anti-gay, anti-trans, anti-BBC, anti-green, anti-cyclist, anti-traffic-control, anti-21st-century, anti-groupthink. It might simply be that you see it one way and others see it differently?

The OP, who I'm sure didn't intend to start a thread with such condescending and offensive comments in it, said that you would not be able to use your car more than 100 times per year to leave your zone to go into or cross another zone. To keep control of the use of cars, recognition cameras would monitor vehicle and fines issued to people who use their car to cross zones more than the allotted number of times.

Whether she was correct in this interpretation of the scheme or not (and it's a fair bet that the majority of posters on here are not and never were town planners, so the OP is all we had to go on) this is what people are responding to.

Yes, it's frustrating sometimes when people only read the first post and comment, but that is Gransnet. Also, several posts had been made where people picked up on what one another had said, and commented on that, until a dozen posts in, siope points out that there are two separate schemes being conflated here, which might have turned things round, but her post starts with accusations about 'right wing' interpretations, alienating people and setting up an oppositional tone to the thread. This continued, as more snide comments about ignorance, 'group think' and so on were piled on, with anyone not agreeing that the zones are likely to work (based on the personal experience of the posters) met with scorn and derision such as in the quote above.

This thread has left a nasty taste, and I've lost interest in the scheme now, but if it does become likely, I hope the councils, or whoever gets to implement it employs a decent PR team who listens to concerns and can correct any misunderstandings without condescension and rudeness, or it will never get off the ground.

I see it more in terms of a return to low-density, human-scale communities, urban villages if you like. with everyday shopping and social needs met by local shops, pubs and cafés but nothing to say you can't go further afield for bigger shopping

The message that comes across is that Planning Officers have got it all completely wrong for the last 50 years and have now realised their mistakes and are backtracking.

The Planners have forced people into cars to get to huge centralised shopping malls and areas with large units housing shops selling everything we need, wreaking havoc on the countryside, hospitals are built out in the countryside, and thousands of local shops and businesses in small towns and villages have been forced to close down. Add into that rising parking charges around small towns which is the final straw for many.
Schools have grown larger, many village primary schools have closed, some secondary schools have thousands of pupils.

All designed by the Planners who decide how we should live.

Already public transport has been reduced which is counter-productive and forces more and more cars on to the roads and isolates many who do not drive.
However, most people who live in small villages and towns have to travel distances to work too.

What will happen to these malls, the areas with huge units such as DIY shops, household goods, supermarkets? Will they be the ghost towns of the future?

Public consultations just pay lip service and are ignored.

I'm not objecting per se but I do ask how much this will cost, what will happen to the huge buildings and malls already there, and will they realise that a better public transport system is the Number One priority to persuade people to leave their car (electric of course) at home?

Yes, sounds idealistic but is it workable?

Better public transport, better road networks and electric cars would be more achievable.

Chaitriona

There is talk of this in Edinburgh but it is difficult to see how it can be implemented.

I don't know where you live in Edinburgh, Chaitriona, but a lot of Edinburgh is already there, I don't just mean places like Marchmont or Stockbridge either. I get the kind of 15-minute community feeling I envisage in grittier Gorgie. There are certainly parts of Edinburgh that could do with getting the Gorgie treatment.

The 15-minute neighbourhoods idea is the antithesis of America. In America the suburbs where the great majority of the population lives have single-family zoning, That means great swathes of houses all on their bit of land (a homeowners association (HOA) will make sure you keep the grass neatly clipped and don't do anything eccentric and unsightly like growing flowers or vegetables or having curtains of an unapproved color [sic]. There are no shops, they go in commercial zones a lot more than 15 min walk away. Not that you'd be able to walk anyway because as soon as you step away from your own property a cop car is sure to come cruising by to demand that you tell them what you're up to. There are no local schools for your children either, or recreation facilities. Everything has to be accessed by car, which is fine if you are old enough to drive but a disaster for children who have to be driven by a parent to do anything. Certainly no bars or cafés for casual socialisation.

Talk about social control! In the so-called Land of the Free too. I don't think many British Gransnetters would like it very much. It probably suits the American Way but in truth America is culturally very different from Britain.

I'm wondering if a lot of this conversation is at cross purposes. I know a lot of comment I've seen elsewhere online sees the 15-minute neighbourhood in terms of putting people in huge stalinist concrete blocks. I don't see that at all. I see it more in terms of a return to low-density, human-scale communities, urban villages if you like. with everyday shopping and social needs met by local shops, pubs and cafés but nothing to say you can't go further afield for bigger shopping.

How's about:
banning sales of 4wd vehicles to non rural addresses
Introducing proper school buses electric of course to scoop up pupils,(we had a coach in 60s that scooped up 88+ kids from numerous schools in Manchester and ferried us to anywhere from 10miles out to where we lived in Derbyshire!!parents paid as they'd no cars then and was safer than non existent public transport)
Minibus scheme for teachers and local workers, we also had this at one place j worked at as it was a timber merchants and off any bus routes , worked a treat! Coach for mill folks and minibus for office staff .no t everyone who runs a car actually needs one outside of commuting , I didn't!! But still had to shell out for it so I could get to work....to earn Dosh to pay for? Car!! Amongst other things!!

There is talk of this in Edinburgh but it is difficult to see how it can be implemented.

Total social engineering and control.

Sounds very American, where I hear you can’t walk in many areas as the roads are only for traffic. No ‘sidewalks’.
Most British towns are very old and have bad traffic problems because they grew up long before traffic. Travel 15 minutes from where I live in any direction and you’re surrounded by open countryside. You’d have to travel further for most things you need.

This would work in London where public transport links are good. Buses are affordable. Tube is OK outside of zone 1 and peak hours, but expensive for that. It makes sense to massively reduce car use in the capital.
But other cities have issues with public transport. Buses in, for example, Oxford and Bristol are expensive. Routes are being cut.
Outside of big conurbations, this won't be implemented. Small cities will struggle without investment.

Living on the boundaries of outer Paris I certainly had problems when I worked as I only had one car and if smog restrictions were in use, every other day even numbered registrations. I had to use the local backroads, to be able to work even though the public transport system was and still is good, it didn’t fit my needs.
Going to another extreme, when I lived in China, 30 years ago, people had to apply to change regions to live, it left families split for several years.

LadyHonoria You say: "Anti-mask, anti-vaxx, anti-EU, anti-woke, anti-immigrant, anti-feminist, anti-gay, anti-trans, anti-BBC, anti-green, anti-cyclist, anti-traffic-control, anti-21st-century, anti-groupthink (oh the irony!)

"Birds of a feather flock together. You'll never see one without the others nearby."

That is a very sweeping statement. It is possible to have doubts about certain issues without being party to the alleged "groupthink" you refer to.

As an example, I did and do have some doubts about the Covid vaccine, and certain traffic control and cycling measures (and I am not a driver). I don't always believe that all of the people in positions of power have everybody's best interests at heart, and I think there is plenty of evidence to substantiate that.

BUT I am most certainly not anti-mask, anti-EU (I voted to remain), anti-woke (I hold the sort of views that are, insultingly in my view, labelled as "woke"), anti-immigrant (mine is a blended family), "anti-feminist, anti-gay, anti-trans" (most definitely not), anti-BBC (I watch it more than any other channel and don't disagree with the licence fee) and anti-green (I'm a member of Greenpeace).

One could argue that the majority viewpoint, at least on this thread, is an example of "group think" - especially when the group that assumes it is automatically in the right feels the need to make all sorts of presumptions about a minority of people, simply because some of their views are not in accordance with their own.